Joey Dee —Right Man, Right Place, Right Time

Often, when far away from home, you are likely to look for some tenuous tether to keep you linked to your roots, if for no other reason than to offset that uncomfortable feeling of homesickness that is the first symptom of isolation.
“Five years after recording the ‘Peppermint Twist’ (it originally hit the charts in Nov. 1961), I ran into Peter O’Toole in Greenwich Village,” Joey Dee said in a telephone interview, just prior to his scheduled appearance at Wildwood’s Fabulous 50s Weekend. “O’Toole told me that while filming ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, my record was the only thing that kept him connected to the outside world.”
The evolution of the Peppermint Twist is a case of obvious talent allied with providential timing and chance location. “The Twist,” first performed by its composer, Hank Ballard in 1958, didn’t become a number one hit until Chubby Checker covered the song in 1960.
Passaic-born Joey Dee had his group — the Starliters — performing in a Lodi nightclub in 1961 when they got a three-day booking into a little known club in New York City called the Peppermint Lounge. That three-day fling turned into a 13-month gig and international fame that reached all the way to the deserts of Arabia.
“The Peppermint Lounge was in the Theater District,” Dee explained, “and one night in October of 1961, there was a torrential downpour as the theaters were emptying, and some of the theater crowd came in to get out of the elements.
“They saw the kids and some of the sailors from the Brooklyn Navy Yard dancing, so some of these society people got up and joined them in doing the Twist. A journalist — Cholly Knickerbocker — was there and he wrote about it the next day.”
The Peppermint Lounge had a waiting line to get in from that night on. And it wasn’t just the Navy.
“All the stars started coming to the Peppermint Lounge,” Dee said. “You name it; they were there.”
Celebrities from John Wayne to Judy Garland to Ted Kennedy would come to see the trend that was exploding on 46th Street. And the Starliters would become the house band at the Peppermint Lounge.
“I decided we had to take advantage of this notoriety,” Dee said. “I contacted three record companies (Capitol, Atlantic,
Roulette) and told them we had to have a release in two weeks. Morris Levy from Roulette said he could do it, so Roulette’s Henry Glover and I sat down and wrote the ‘Peppermint Twist’ in 90 minutes.”
Joey Dee and the Starliters will join many other performers from the early rock ‘n roll era at Wildwoods Convention Center Oct. 16 as the Wildwoods celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Twist during their 7th Annual Fabulous ’50s Weekend.
“I remember my first time in Wildwood,” he said. “It was 1962 at the Riptide. I had discovered a group called the Ronnettes at the Peppermint Lounge, and I gave them their first paying job. Later they signed with Phil Spector.”
Dee has continued to perform during the past 50 years, helping to keep his generation’s music alive. After Fab 50s Weekend, Dee will appear at the Papermill Playhouse in Milburn. You can find both his schedule and a detailed history of the Peppermint Twist phenomenon at his Web site: www.joeydee.com.
“The first time I ever heard Hank Ballard’s Twist I started doing it, and I’ve done it ever since,” he said. “The Twist allowed the average Joe to become popular. But music today has no melody. As a saxophone player and songwriter, I miss the melody.
Where is the melody?
“But I don’t look back,” he continued. “I have 12 grandchildren and they know all about my music.”
Having been a teenager during that time, I was and still am acutely aware of the evolution of this ‘happening’ that changed they way we dance — even to this day. From Hank Ballard to Chubby Checker to Joey Dee, this ‘craze’, as Dee noted, was, “…truly a phenomenon.”
Wouldn’t it have to be, to impact Lawrence of Arabia?